Vintage Art Deco Glass Embalming Bottle

This is a vintage glass embalming bottle. We’ve sold a number of them — and quickly, at that.

duo-escohol embalming fluid bottle

A product of the Embalmers’ Supply Company (ESCO) of Westport, Conn. USA. (“Manufacturing Chemists to the Funeral Profession since 1886”) the label reads:

Duo-Escohol (Pre-Injection) Incarnadines the Blood! Unit No.1 of the 1-2-3 System of ESCO Distinctive Embalming ~ Incarnadining Agents ~ Synergistic Increment ~ Balsam Principles ~ Double-Base Preservatives

Embalming primarily involves the replacement of bodily fluids with chemicals to prevent putrefaction. (Pre-injection chemicals break up clots and otherwise conditions vessels & bodily tissues, making them more receptive to the embalming process.) That makes this vintage bottle a hot little funerary collectible.

art deco vintage esco embalming bottle label

But even without the label, or knowing that this is a death and funeral related item, the old glass bottle itself is beautiful. It has such great art deco style! Look at that fabulous step-pyramid top, all the embossing, all the details, the measurement guide along the side… Just gorgeous! No wonder these ESCO bottles sell so fast! (Especially so when these bottles have their original paper labels, as all of ours have had.) They have to be one of the most beautiful embalming bottles ever made.

step-pyramid top glass embalming bottle

measuring guide on art deco embalming bottle

ESCO clearly had their own specific glass bottles made. This one is marked:

2
Bottle
Made in U.S.A.
ESCO
Pat Pending

patent pending esco embalming fluid bottle

The patent pending means this particular bottle was likely an early example; Duo-Escohol was first produced by ESCO in 1926.

Such a beautiful, functional, bottle that it certainly is a great statement piece in any funerary or bottle collection. And quite the conversation piece in general.

antique vintage art deco glass funerary bottle

PS One of our bottle did not have the original cap; instead, it had the cap from bottle or step number two in the process — the Duo-Raa-Co.

vintage embalming fluid bottle cap

Antique & Vintage Camphor Glass Jewelry

Over at My Humble Collection Rumblings, Stella Collector has a great article on collecting camphor glass jewelry — including fabulous photographs.

Here’s a quick snippet to entice you to read the rest:

Camphor Glass pieces started to be made first around 1890 mostly as mourning necklaces or brooches, and were made right up to the early 1940,s…. becoming perhaps most popular in the late 1920’s to mid 1930’s.

Reproduction pieces have been made in the last 20 or 30 years and it is really not easy for the lay man to tell the difference, it’s just a little thing here or there a clasp perhaps…take for instance there were no safety clasps on pins back before 1930 they used C clasps.